Many physical activities including various sports and therapeutic exercises involve short duration non-reflexive motor programs (often colloquially but incorrectly referred to as “muscle memory”). The specific activity or exercise will typically involve one or more body joints that each constitute a biomechanical angle. Properly executing the activity or exercise will often involve changing that biomechanical angle over time by specific degrees in coordination with other specific actions. Unfortunately the individual exercising the activity will often not be able to directly observe the biomechanical angle in real time, and must rely instead upon their native kinematic feedback (proprioception), comments and instructions from observers, non-real time feedback (as gained, for example, by later watching a video of the activity) and so forth to gain some understanding of this aspect of developing the desired motor program.
Various prior art approaches exist to attempt to supplement and aid the training process. In general, these approaches all suffer from one or more of the following: significant expense, considerable necessary up-front training with respect to the supplemental approach, non-real time feedback, non-intuitive feedback, significant complexity, and/or additional participants are required to facilitate the monitoring and/or evaluate the results. Further, these prior art approaches tend to work by presenting a model (often represented by one or more performance thresholds) against which the individual must seek to conform their own performance. In some instances, or for some individuals, such a model can be effective. But for many other individuals this approach will be inappropriate, confusing, frustrating, and/or counterproductive.
For example, theories abound as to a golfer's proper body positioning and movement during a golf swing. The appropriate time for cocking of the wrists during the backswing, or for bending of the left elbow (for a right-handed golfer), if at all, generates much debate. Further, much can depend on the type of shot to be executed, and the club selected for the shot. Perhaps most importantly, however, the variable that the prior art fails to adequately address is the uniqueness of each golfer's swing in that each individual golfer will likely have different body motions for their ideal golf swing based on their physical abilities and characteristics. For instance, a device that signals a golfer that their swing is deviating from a preset limit with respect to bending or flexing of their elbow or wrist is of little use to a golfer who cannot execute the required body positioning such as due to an injury or other physical limitation.
Accordingly, there is a need for a motion training apparatus or device that better augments a trainee's internal kinematic feedback for motion learning purposes. More particularly, a training device that is not limited to common ideal motion learning for a group of trainees, and is otherwise more universal in its approach to motion learning would be desirable.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention.